Sir, – Further to Mr Loader’s letter regarding emergency ambulance responses to incidents in the Dales (D&S letters, April 5), we thought that your readers would appreciate clarification on how the Yorkshire Air Ambulance operates alongside the region’s ambulance service.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust works in close partnership with the Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA) charity, its contribution being to provide and fund the paramedics who work as part of the vital airborne response to emergencies across Yorkshire. However, this valuable resource is only available to Yorkshire residents because of the on-going generosity of members of the public who raise funds to keep the helicopters in the air.

The trust’s emergency operations centres in York and Wakefield, or the YAA air support unit, task the two air ambulances to incidents in line with agreed procedures.

Our land-based crews provide excellent clinical care to patients and can be complemented by the air ambulance to provide additional support.

This is particularly beneficial in emergency situations where patients are located in difficult terrain or where time-critical hospital care is needed and a patient is situated a significant distance away.

Land ambulances continue to provide the main emergency response to patients and the two organisations work very closely together to ensure that those who need a swift helicopter response get just that.

As with all rural communities, providing emergency responses to incidents is challenging, but we would like to reassure members of the public that our priority is providing a high-quality ambulance service across Yorkshire and we work very hard to ensure we provide a timely response to all of our patients wherever they may be.

We are pleased that we continue to see year-on-year improvements in our response times in North Yorkshire and, despite a backdrop of increases in demand for the 999 service, we are reaching patients in this area of our county quicker than ever before.

In addition, response times are not the only measure of the services we provide and we are also very proud of the excellent clinical care we provide to our patients. We will continue to have a very close working relationship for the ultimate benefit of all our patients.

DAVID WHITING, chief executive, Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust; PETER SUNDERLAND, chairman, Yorkshire Air Ambulance.